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Friday, November 22, 2013

Knowing more about a charity is not always better

My family has always been involved
with charitable organizations.I have
childhood memories of my parents going off to meetings for charities they
supported.These days, we set aside
money for causes that are important to us.As a result, we are on the mailing lists for many other charities that
are looking for donations.We get
letters, notices of events, and newsletters telling us about the good work
being done by a variety of groups.

The idea behind these mailings is
that the more we learn about a particular charity, the more likely we might be
to give money to it.

That makes a lot of sense, of
course.You cannot give money to a
charity you have never heard about.But,
what is the best strategy for a charity to pursue?

This question was addressed in an
interesting set of studies by Robert Smith and Norbert Schwarz in the October,
2012 issue of the Journal of Consumer
Psychology.

These researchers suggested that
how much people know about a charity can have a different influence on people’s
donations depending on how people interpret their level of knowledge.Specifically, charities often have two
goals.One is to spread awareness about
a particular issue.Many charities
focused on the environment, for example, work to help people to learn about
threats to the climate and to fragile ecosystems.The second goal is to help the problem.A food bank, for example, works to feed
hungry people.

When the goal of a charity is to
help people, then the more people know about the charity, the more they should
be interested in giving to it.The idea
is that when people know a lot about the charity, they will assume that the
charity must be doing a lot of good work, and so their money will be
well-used.

When the goal of a charity is to
spread awareness, though, then when people know a lot about it, that might
actually hurt the charity.The idea is
that if the issue is already well-known, the charity may not need their help to
spread the news about the issue.

In one study, adults from a
community were recruited to participate.They read about a real charity that aims to reduce the influence of
childhood heart disease.Participants read
one of two descriptions of the charity.One description focused on how the charity helps children in need.The other focused on how the charity raises
awareness about childhood heart disease.

After reading the description,
participants took a quiz about the material to test how much they remembered
about it.Some participants took an easy
quiz that asked only general questions about the charity.Other participants took a hard quiz that
asked them very specific questions.People taking the hard quiz answered fewer questions correctly than
people taking the easy quiz. Those
taking the hard quiz also rated that the quiz was more difficult than those who
took the easy quiz.

At the end of the study,
participants had the chance to make actual donations to the charity.All of the donated money was given to the
charity.

When people read the description
about the way the charity helps children with heart disease, people gave more
money when they took the easy version of the quiz than when they took the hard
version.That is, when they believed
they knew a lot about the charity, they gave more money than when they believed
they did not know much about it.

When people read the description
about the way the charity raises awareness about heart disease, the results
were quite different.Those who took the
hard version of the quiz actually donated more money than those who took the
easy version of the quiz.When the
charity is trying to raise awareness, people were more interested in giving
money when they believed that they did not know much about the charity than
when they believed they knew a lot.

This research demonstrates that
the way you interpret how much you know depends on your goals.For each version of the description of the
charity, some people believed they knew more about it than others.But, whether that knowledge affected their
interest in donating depended on the goal of the charity.

If you are trying to raise
people’s awareness about an issue, then, it is important to go beyond just
telling them about the issue.There are
two ways that you can make your message more effective.First, start the discussion by getting people
to think about how little they knew about this issue before hearing your
message.Second, remind them how little
most people know about this issue, which is why it is crucial to raise awareness.